:mattLandia:

In 1990, I spent about 6 months living in Baños, Ecuador. If you've ever seen the movie Proof of Life, many of those scenes were filmed in and around that area. An absolutely green, lucious mountain town right on the edge of Amazon basin. So it was alarming to read about the most recent volcanic activity in the area.

Col. Robert Rodriguez, deputy director of Ecuador's Civil Defense, said more than half the residents of Baños -- a popular tourist city of 18,000 at the northeast foot of the volcano -- had evacuated, many fleeing before dawn as the ash rained down. By daylight, Baños was covered in a thick brown soup, its houses, cars and roads smothered, its trees ripped bare. Baños resident Gabriela Gonzalez went out at dawn with a cloth bag to collect pieces of volcanic rock that had rained down. "Later we will sell these to these same gringo" tourists, she said.

Yep, with a can-do post volcano attitude like that, Baños will survive just fine.